Honey and Apple Harvest

The bees filled a few frames of the top super. They also had capped honey in the super that I gave them to clean up. I extracted three quarts and a half pint for me and left the other super for them. There are lots of bees in the hive so no doubt they will need plenty of honey to get through our cold winter.

This late honey was also light and incredibly delicious, bringing the season's harvest to twenty-six pounds and a half pint. Celebrating my good fortune, I baked a loaf of honey white bread in the Sun Oven and spread it liberally with this golden goodness. Bliss.

Not only did I get all the honey, but the two apple trees gave me the first real crop ever. Lissa and I canned 9 pints of apple pie filling. I put up 27 pints of applesauce, filled the fridge crisper drawers with these lovely Criterion apples for eating, and still have a few to pick. This is part of the crop, after I thinned it early on. At the last, I had to prop up the limbs with cut branches to keep the slender limbs from breaking under the heavy loads.

The faces of the apples were a bit grimy from the road dirt, but they cleaned up nicely.

The Criterion apples turned out to be the best I have ever tasted in my life, absolutely fabulous. They are a keeper, literally and figuratively. I got the tree from Miller Nurseries in the spring of 2008. After ordering fruit trees and strawberry plants from Millers for many, many years, we were aghast to learn that last year was the final one for the mail-order nursery.

Looks like I now have a hard-to-find variety of apple to go with the unnamed red one that was here already. The fence is to discourage stray cows. They damaged another apple tree that I planted with the Criterion in '08. Even though it is beyond recovery,  I hadn't the heart to cut it down. When it produced one very small red apple, I thanked it profusely and didn't mention its terminal condition.

The apples are all due to the bees's pollinating work on the blossoms in the early spring. I believe they really love my organic acres as much as I love them.

While the bees will have plenty of stores for the cold months, the grasshoppers continue leaping from spot to spot. How something with so few survival instincts could become so plentiful this year is a mystery. They heed not the shorter days, the turning leaves or morning fog. Winter is dead ahead, like a massive iceberg from which there is no turning.

This indolent grasshopper whiled away some time, sitting on the deck railing, watching me read a novel. Perhaps she enjoyed listening to the Respighi that I had on the CD player drown out the gunfire from the Skeeters. Obviously not a Prepper, she had all the time in the world to spare.

Finally, I shooed it away. Its continued scrutiny of me was somehow unnerving. It made me feel I should get up and dehydrate, can and freeze even more vegetables and fruits.

The Dragonfly Squadron

Until recently, there were lots of Swallows flying around at the bridge. Since there aren't as many barns out in the country these days, I guess they should be renamed Bridge Swallows. Lately, it would appear that the Swallows have gone back to Capistrano.

Thus the Dusk Patrol had relocated the mosquito fighters to another area. But recent rains had ensured plenty of those pests to torment me when gardening. They were the tiny ones that utilize small but sharp syringes to take a sample of my blood. I did not wish to be a donor.

Fortunately, the valiant bi-wing Dragonflies for a while were still guarding the air. Squadrons of them relentlessly swooped, dived and maneuvered overhead. It was not possible for me to see them actually gobble up the mosquitoes but they did some tricky maneuvers. In flight, the little warriors looked like miniature helicopters.

They were seen briefly resting on the top tier of the garden, which I believe was their designated Aerodrome. I watched them do touch-and-goes.

Some days, a good stiff breeze kept the mosquitoes grounded. No doubt the Dragonflies were stood down and enjoyed very small beers at their favorite watering hole.

Usually, there were several dozen of that Twilight Squadron working the area. They took off from the Aerodrome for dogfights with the mosquito bombers (not RAF de Havilland Mosquitoes).

That made it possible for me and my pets to be outside.

To paraphrase Churchill,  Never have so few owed so much to so many.

Three Tomato Seeds

In March, I started some tomato plants from seed. My motto is too many is better than too few, so I had plenty to give to my daughters.

Lissa started a Permaculture garden last fall. I wasn't convinced that it would work. She didn't till the soil in her small back yard plot. She scattered some of Molly's chickens' bedding and manure, put down some opened, overlapping brown paper leaf bags and piled layers of leaves on top. She bought some composted chicken litter and scattered that, then added lawn clippings when the grass started growing.

In spring, she liberated some red wriggler worms that she had been raising in the house. When I went over with the tomato seedlings in May, I was amazed that the earth under the mulch was rich and loamy, no trace of the grass that had been growing on the spot.

The three tomato plants went in the ground. The soil was filled with tiny earthworms. They loved their new home.

Meanwhile, I planted twice as many tomato plants. A few got killed by frost. Some of the tomatoes got sunscald.

When next I was at her place, the tomatoes were obviously thriving in their new rich location.

They'd climbed out of their cages by late July.

I began reading up on Permaculture.

Every few days in August, I canned a few pints of tomatoes from my plants. I ran up my water bill giving them drinks. Grasshoppers were feasting on the tomatoes, so I had to bring them in to finish ripening. Mostly, they were small to medium tomatoes.

Lissa gave her plants only occasional water. She had plenty of tomatoes to eat, give away, can whole and make pizza sauce.

I started a couple of Permaculture patches in my weedy garden.

Lis borrowed Chris's Victorio strainer. I suggested that she bring  some of her tomatoes up to meet mine. Object: sauce. It was like asking another mother to bring their newborn baby to come meet mine and then finding my preemie was being compared to her husky ten pound future Sumo wrestler.

The orange ones are Kellogg's Breakfast, an heirloom. I was able to contribute only about six small tomatoes to the operation.

We cooked two pots of juice down to one pot of sauce, a special blend of three varieties.

We canned 21 half pints of this great stuff, which will be perfect for homemade pizzas.

In addition to turning the handle of the strainer, my part was chiefly planting the original three seeds.